Chapter 29: Detention Explodes! Believe It! (YOUTH!)
"Hari?"
"Yes, Hermione?"
"You just killed a student."
"And?"
"You just killed a student in front of everyone."
"My father would be so disappointed."
"I should hope so!"
"Lesson after lesson and then I just gut someone with everyone watching me."
"Wait wha—"
"But that's not much worse than everyone knowing you murdered your whole extended family, is it? If everyone knows you did it, does it really matter that they didn't actually see it?"
"No!"
"Thanks, Hermione!" Hari skipped off out a window. No one was surprised that there was no splat. Hari seemed to have a positive genius for finding secret passageways that were disguised as suicide attempts.
"What just happened?"
"Um . . ." Blaise began. Then he stopped. His mouth opened and closed a few times. "I've got nothing."
"On a separate note," said Daphne, "did Hari just say his father murdered his extended family?"
"Technically, no," replied Tracy.
"True." Pansy was rubbing her face with her hand. "He did, however, strongly imply that this was the case."
"And that his father would be upset with him for killing people in front of witnesses."
"Which rather suggests that the objection is the witnesses, not the killing."
"So Hari is a violent nutter," Millie summed up. "Is anyone surprised?"
"A little, yes," said Daphne. "The violent part, I mean."
Millicent shrugged. "I saw him deck my mom so hard her head smashed the ceiling."
"Oh right."
"I got the feeling he didn't know she would survive when he hit her."
"Oh."
"Natural causes," added Blaise.
Daphne looked at him silently for a moment. "We really need to get you some help."
X
X
The headlines in the Profit the next day read, "Scion of Prominent Family Dies to Boy-Who-Lived in Sanctioned Lethal Duel". The body of the article went on to note that the duel was part of the official curriculum (amended ten minutes before publication) and that despite the lack of teaching, Dueling was technically part of the Hogwarts Charter. A good deal of the evidence that this was not some sort of attempt by known wack-a-doodle, Albus Percival Wolfric Brian James Charles Frankie Dumbledore, to kill a member of an important family that frequently opposed his actions in the Wizengamot on the grounds that he was "a daft old coot" and "trying to destroy everything we good Purebloods hold dear, including the keeping of Muggle chattel" (direct quotes from transcripts of the most recent hearings on the use of Compulsion Charms on Muggles for extended periods), was that the two staff members who oversaw the duel were one, Severus Tobias Snape, known Dungeon-Bat, Greasy Bastard, and all-around asshole, who might be in Dumbledore's pocket after being saved from Azkaban by the man, but never acted like it and two, Gilderoy Lockhart, OOM (2nd Class), KOW, JAH, HYE, BUA, LIO, MCW, DHI, JJJ, OIU, SSJ4, HAK and SWQ, a known dueling master and honorable chap. There could be no question that with Gilderoy "Golden Boy" Lockhart involved, that everything was on the up and up.
There were the calls for Dumbledore to resign from his positions on the grounds that someone had died at a school where one of the classes involved poisons, explosives, and corrosive gases and the building itself frequently attacked students and teachers alike. And there was one article mentioning that the Boy-Who-Lived was probably evil or something for having killed, but it was buried somewhere below the adverts for singing corsets and creams that reversed penis-enlargement that had gone too far.
Considering that the facts of the matter were that someone had been gutted, then bisected, then actually atomized in front of the school, the article was rather mellow. It questioned Dumbledore's competence, but no more than usual (each and every day usually had at least one editorial that called on him to step down from one or more of his positions. So far, it had resulted in a grand total of nothing at all) and parts of the coverage bordered on positive for teaching the ancient art of dueling. And in a shocking twist, one of the most reactionary of the editorial-writers commended Dumbledore for not giving in to the panty-waists of modern thinking and instead continued the traditional methods of dueling instruction, using only lethal combat to weed out the weak (the term used was one that the paper had to redact on the grounds that "mudblood" was insufficiently rude to act as a euphemism for what she had written) and she hoped that there would be further efforts on the Headmaster's part to winnow down the lot of "limp-wristed nancy-boys and [redacted]" that Hogwarts was turning out these days.
Dumbledore seemed to find the whole thing endlessly entertaining and spent the entirety of breakfast slapping his thigh as he read sections aloud despite Professor McGonagall's insistence that the language was too salty for impressionable, young ears. The editorials in particular were filled with an impressive degree of bile and at one point, Dumbledore curtailed his oral recitation when he realized that someone had embedded in the text a ritual to cause the paper to burst into a pile of screaming fire. Hari was suspiciously quiet. The only thing he said to anyone was a comment to Hermione that he was going to have to step things up in order to find "the real one".
X
X
"Hari?"
"Yes, Girl-Tobi?" Hari absently swatted her hand away from the sugar bowl on the Slytherin table.
"You killed someone a few days ago, right?"
"Yep."
"Isn't that bad?"
"Not when I do it."
"Oh." Girl-Tobi's head cocked to the side as she considered that. Then she smiled. "Okay!"
X
X
"Oh lord of Khaos," cried Gred.
"Take pity on humble petitioners," added Gred.
"Ah. What can I do for you two?"
"Just wanted to thank you for dealing with Drudine for us."
"Hm?"
"He'd been talking with Ginny," explained Forge.
"A few times, he cornered her," continued Fred.
"And she never looked like herself after."
"We'd been meaning to make him back off, but we've had limited success."
"Ah. Shame you didn't tell me before I killed him."
"Why?"
"Because then I'd have been able to charge you."
"Oh."
"See you two around." Hari waved and walked up a flight of stairs down to the dungeons.
X
X
Days for Gilderoy Lockhart became distinctly unpleasant. Anything that could go wrong did. His clothes somehow managed to get horribly starched so that he actually crackled when he walked and he'd accidentally cut a student with the crease in his sleeve. His tooth-treatment turned his mouth black and only application of emergency cosmetics managed to prevent him from having to go outside his rooms like that. He kept tripping, too. He sometimes went a whole day unable to walk down a hallway without falling on his face. There was no reason and Madam Pomfrey could find no sign of any curse on him (not that a schoolchild would be able to manage something so complicated) and so he was wondering if there were some new magical disease that was causing his loss of balance.
And then there was his room. Something was wrong with it. He kept slamming into things when he knew that they hadn't been in the way the day before. It was starting to make him wonder if he were insane. And his creams and ointments kept being shuffled around. He always laid them out in a particular order, but he'd found himself applying the wrong tonic a few times. He'd yet to mix up the depilatory and beauty-locks bottles, but it was only a matter of time.
Plus there had been that detention he'd assigned Harry Potter. The staff had been surprised to hear that he expected the boy to show up, but the lad had . . .
X
X
The door to Lockhart's office opened and the boy walked in. Why didn't he dress like other students? What was with the red clouds? "Sit! You are going to help write answers to my fan mail."
The boy had blinked for a moment and then nodded and sat down, taking out some sort of stick. For the first time, Potter paid attention as he'd explained the importance of answering letters and how to properly flatter people without promising anything. He'd also expounded at length on the avoidance of being sued for saying things and how touchy the public could get. It had been quite nice to find that the boy was listening to what he said.
Then Potter had silently looked at the stick, which grew a quill-nib and then glanced over his sample letter before opening a stack of fan mail and beginning to work. The first letter was presented for his assessment and he was astounded to find that it was almost a perfect replica of his letter and the handwriting was indistinguishable. After that, he sat down to work on his own pile of the stuff. It was satisfying to enjoy the background hum of himself talking to himself in the portraits around his office, with just the sound of scratching quills.
They had finally finished the letters and Lockhart had asked an Elf to set them aside to be sent out after New Years when people would be especially satisfied to start things off with words from him.
"I'm disappointed in you, Professor," Potter said.
"What?"
"You didn't come to detention."
"What are you—" and then the world had gone white. And red. And hot. When he'd come to, the room had been a shambles; splinters were everywhere and his portraits had been shredded. There had been no sign of the blasted boy.
The worst had come when he'd gone to Dumbledore. Despite his accusations, the man had insisted that Harry Potter was incapable of such an act because he'd been breaking into the Seventh-Year greenhouses to plant something. At midnight. On a Wednesday.
X
X
"Hari?"
"Pansy."
"As is my solemn duty: Christmas Break starts tomorrow."
"Okay."
"And none of us are going to invite you to our family homes."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Because Blaise's mom sent him a letter inviting me and so did Millie's."
"They decided not to extend their parents' invitations."
"And you can't come to my place anyway," interjected Daphne. "My parents will not be happy when I bring Girl-Tob—gah! Astoria—home."
"Why?"
Daphne's eye twitched. Tracy put a hand on her arm. "Shh. Calm thoughts, Daph. He doesn't know."
Hari shrugged and dismissed it as the workings of the female mind. He nodded to Blaise while moving the "maple" syrup (Hari had some serious doubts that it actually came from a tree. He suspected it was "breakfast syrup") out of Girl-Tobi's reach while shoveling some eggs onto her plate. "Eat." He smacked her hand. "Without sweets."
"So this year I actually have Christmas gifts for you guys," said Hari over the sound of Astoria's whining. "You already had sugar and you have Potions and I plan to do a bit of exploring." Girl-Tobi looked down and ate her food sullenly. "Tomorrow evening, you can show your parents your new magic on your sister." Girl-Tobi perked up while Daphne's hand had already gripped a knife and was in the process of throwing when Tracy shoved her wrist down to the table.
X
X
Snape was worried that Potter wasn't in his class. For one thing, Girl-Tobi was making a volatile potion today and he was constantly waiting for the hissing sound that would mean that most of his students would not be bothering him with dunderheaded questions because he'd be in prison and they'd be bothering their maker. The other reason was that this meant that he didn't know where his most troubling student was. Whenever Potter was out of his sight, there was a nagging feeling that something was going to happen that would become his problem.
X
X
Hari tapped Madam Pomfrey on the shoulder. She screamed and whirled, trying to cover the Seventh-Year she had been treating for a . . . personal problem.
"Are you busy?"
The nurse looked over her shoulder and her patient and then at Hari. "What do you think?"
"Oh good." Hari grabbed her wrist and dragged her over to one of her workbenches. Behind them were the indignant cries of someone who had a pressing issue that was no longer being treated. "So I wanted to see if you could work out how to grow any of this." He from his pocket a bit of grayish flesh in the shape of an arm three inches long.
Madam Pomfrey, despite her inclination to return to her duties, drew her wand and prodded the thing. "No, I don't think I can. You should talk to Pomona—Professor Sprout." She paused. "Can I keep this?" She waved her wand a few times. "This was attached to a man without magic for a decade, give or take. Interesting how it bonded with him. It has some properties that I want to study. Maybe it could be fashioned into prosthetics when regeneration is too expensive? Or maybe when dark magic has been used?"
"Go ahead and keep it. I have more. But I'd like to get some fresh that wasn't attached to a creepy grave-robber."
"Madam Pomfrey!" cried the student. "It's moving again!"
"Oh!" she tucked the miniature limb into a pocket and bustled off, brandishing her wand. From behind the curtain came roaring sounds. Hari waved genially and trotted off.
He was halfway to the Greenhouses when he remembered that he'd wanted to ask the medic if possession were a normal thing around these parts. Oh well. It probably wasn't serious.
X
X
The door to the greenhouse slammed open and Hari burst in. His classmates stared at him in open shock. Not, mind, that he was interrupting a class, but that he was in a Herbology class.
"Good morning, Professor Sprout!" Hari shouldered a grinning Theodore Nott aside, causing him to drop the Mandrake he'd been readying to place on a Ravenclaw's shoulder. It hit the ground and began to scream. Everyone stared at Hari, who looked mildly annoyed that someone had interrupted his interruption of a class, but was otherwise unaffected by the sound that should have caused some serious oculo-aural hemorrhaging.
Hari tried to continue what he'd been saying before realizing that Professor Sprout was wearing earmuffs and wasn't hearing anything. Besides, he couldn't hear himself talk over the noise. Best to fix that. His foot stomped down on the thing's throat and it changed over to terrified gagging and grasping at the ruined not-flesh.
Professor Sprout was vibrating with fury until a miniature arm was held up in front of her. Something about it cut off the thought process of rage. Her wand jabbed the thing and it attempted to swat the intruding object away.
"You can have it if you can help me grow some that isn't tainted by grave-robbing. Let me know." He tucked the arm back in his pocket and left the greenhouse where Terrance Boot was busily performing CPR on a Mandrake.
X
X
The faculty waved to the Hogwarts Express as it chugged its way out of Hogsmeade. Most of them had varying degrees of pleasure on their faces at the fact that for the next two weeks, there would be comparative peace in the castle. The only downside was that there had been a further petrification that morning. It wasn't really a big issue, but it was starting to get a bit silly, they felt.
"I'm going to need to take a short trip into London."
Several Professors jumped, clutching their chests. Snape just shook his head though. Dumbledore nodded amiably. "Of course, my boy. I assume you have some last minute Christmas st—shopping to do?"
"In a manner of speaking, Professor Headmaster." Hari began to jog along the train tracks.
"Headmaster?"
"Yes, Minerva?"
"Shouldn't we ask for a little more detail about his plans?"
"Not unless you want to be called as a witness," muttered Snape.
That pretty much killed conversation for the morning.
(A/N John)
This chapter had some bits that I found absolutely hilarious and some that I merely found funny. I adored writing the Profit article. And yes, thank you, I am aware that I change how I spell its name randomly.
(A/N 2 John)
I should clarify by reiterating once again that in this story, omake are canon. That may not be true in all our stories, but it is in this one, please stop asking for them to be made canonical.
(A/N 3 John)
I actually laid the groundwork for plot later in the story this chapter. It also successfully derailed my entire plan for the year pretty violently. So yeah.
(A/N 4)
I also enjoy how Snape is totally aware of the facts of life regarding Hari. And the fact that someone was insane enough to teach Hari Great Clone Explosion. I'm betting Deidara learned it just to teach it to Hari.
